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THE LIMITS OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE 



FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER, 



JANUARY 12, 1851. 



By NATHAN^IEL hall. 



33ublfsJ)eti bs 3ElEqucst. 



BOSTON: 

WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 

111, Washington Street. 
MDCCCLI. 



THE LIMITS OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 



S E E M N 



'REACHED IN THE 



FIEST CHURCH, DORCHESTER, 



JANUARY 12, 1851. 



/ 

By NATHANIEL hall. 



^^utUsljcli bs lElcquest. 




y 



BOSTON: 
WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 

III, Washington Street. 
MDCCCLI. 






boston: 

thurston, torky, and emerson, 

Printers, Devonshire Street. 



It becomes me to state, what those who heard it will perceive, 
that this Sermon has been somewhat altered from what it was as 
preached, — not at all in respect to any principle or position, but 
by the enlargement upon some points, which the time allotted 
to a Sunday's Discourse forbade in its delivery. Let me 
further say, that I have yielded with no little reluctance to the 
request for its publication, — a reluctance which has been over- 
come, in part, by the known fact that its views have been greatly 
misrepresented, unintentionally or otherwise ; and also in the hope, 
perhaps a presumptuous one, that it may do something in helping 
to guide some few minds with regard to the subject it discusses. 
The temerity, as it may seem to some, of publishing views opposed 
to those of so many who have the respect and confidence of the 
community, I do not feel. Truth is independent of persons. It 
is not received of men, though they may help us to obtain it. 
Whatever there may be of it in these humble pages, is not mine, 
but God's. 



SERMON. 



ROMANS, XIII. 1, 2. 

" LET EVERY SOUL BE SUBJECT UNTO THE HIGHER POWERS. FOR THERE 
IS NO POWER BUT OF GOD ; THE POWERS THAT BE ARE ORDAINED OF GOD. 
WHOSOEVER, THEREFORE, RESISTETH THE POWER, RESISTETH THE ORDI- 
NANCE OF GOD." 

Civil government exists by Divine appointment, 
and is therefore to be respected and obeyed. Such 
is the abstract proposition which this passage in- 
cludes and presents. It is a proposition which reason 
and common sense confirm and indorse. Natural 
religion, in this particular, has no controversy with 
revealed. In order to perceive how plainly this is 
so, let us fix, for a moment, on another proposition, 
lying back of this, — namely, civil society is of 
Divine appointment. The propositions are not iden- 
tical, inasmuch as society must, at some time, have 
existed without government. Civil society is of 
Divine appointment — is an institution of God. And 
this is evident, in the fact of those original instincts in 
man, leading him directly, we may say impelling him. 



to such result ; in the fact, also, that society is essen- 
tial to the development and well-being of the indi- 
vidual and the race. Man isolated from his fellows, 
living by and to himself, with that only which his in- 
dividual strength and talent might supply, if he con- 
tinued to exist at all, would do so at a most wretched 
rate. All the progress of the race, all its advances in 
whatever makes life most desirable, for its higher as 
Avell as its inferior ends, has been conditioned upon 
the existence of society. Society, then, is of Divine 
appointment. It is written, in these facts, as by the 
finger of God. And if this be so, then Government 
is of Divine appointment, inasmuch as society can- 
not fulfill its ends, cannot exist to any good purpose, 
without it. The very idea of civil society supposes 
the surrender, in certain directions, and to a certain 
extent, of individual rights, and the suppression of 
individual impulses and desires, in submission to a 
general, constituted authority, and for the sake of 
benefits not otherwise to be secured. And if civil 
government be of Divine appointment, it follows, 
that obedience to its authority and laws is a sacred 
obligation. The conclusion is so very obvious, that I 
cannot conceive of its being gainsayed. I do not 
know that it is, as a general proposition. There is 
no difln.culty, I apprehend, as to the abstract rule. 
The difficulty is in relation to specific cases which 
come under it ; for the i-ule, general and universal 



as is its principle, has its limitations and exceptions. 
No one would say, that obedience to civil government 
was a sacred obligation in all cases — ivhatevcr it 
might command. Were it to command, for instance, 
that parents should cruelly maim or torture their 
children, or teach them any gross immorality, or that 
2^eople generally should practise theft, or utter pro- 
fanity, or the like, — who would say that it was a 
sacred obligation to obey it, as regards these things I 
AVhere, then, if limit there be, does that limit lie 1 
By what principle is it defined 1 AVe want a 2)rm- 
ciple, — something which shall keep us from being 
driven hither and thither, now towards this conclu- 
sion and now towards that, as others may urge us by 
their reasoning, or their rhetoric, or their sophistries. 
AVe want a principle, which we can see to be a true 
one, and by which each may judge, in the premises, 
for himself There are times when we are liable to be 
blmded to the clearest principles, which, at other 
times, and in other circumstances, we see as such ; 
when, by reason of the mental confusedness caused 
by self-interest, or prejudice, or passion, or a view 
to consequences, the strongest intellects fail to per- 
ceive, what, to the ingenuous mind of childhood, 
knowing nothing of these distorting media, is plainly 
evident. We all need to be on our guard against 
influences existing on either side of the question now 
before us — no longer a mere ethical abstraction — 



to prevent us from a true decision. In no heats of 
unhallowed excitement, but in the calm of sober reflec- 
tion, should we seek to know concerning it. And 
here is one, among other reasons, why on the Sabbath, 
and in its public assemblies, in the hush of earthly 
strife, amid devotional and holy thought, it should 
have a consideration and discussion. The principle, 
then, I repeat, what is it ? — by which to limit and 
bound the general proposition, which, as such, all 
admit, — that obedience to civil government is a 
sacred obligation. It has its limitations, as we see, 
when specific cases are presented, — as the wisest 
and best of all times have practically maintained. 
How shall we knoAv and define them % 

Does not the answer lie in this consideration % that 
the relations Ave sustain to civil government, do not, 
and cannot, overlay and interrupt those moral rela- 
tions which we sustain to Him by whose appointment 
it exists. Whatever society, through its government, 
may do, it may not disturb those relations — it may 
not come between the soul and God — it may not 
come between the soul's sense of duty to Him and 
the performance of that duty. Whatever authority 
God may have delegated to human governments, it 
cannot be an authority — every sentiment and prin- 
ciple within us forbid the thought — to abrogate or 
suspend any one of those moral requirements which 
spring out of the essential attributes of His nature. 



and are eternal as himself. It cannot he that the 
laws upon the statute books of States, are, in any 
conceivable or possible circumstances, to limit or 
lessen our obligation to the law, traced by the very 
hand of the Almighty, ineftaceably, upon the tables 
of the heart. Civil government, as a creature of 
God, is bound to conform its requirements to the 
laws of its Creator. As an instrumentality included 
within, and forming a part of, His moral govern- 
ment, it is bound to conform itself to the principles 
of that government. Whenever it does otherwise, 
whenever it requires of its subjects what is a pal- 
pable \iolation of these princij)les, it has, so far, 
ceased to be of God's ordaining. In setting at 
naught, by its enactments, an eternal moral law, 
it is criminally false to the purposes of its existence. 
In commanding others to set it at naught in their 
practice, it has, so far, forfeited its claim to their 
obedience. 

Am I stating a principle inconsistent with the 
teaching of the text"? Nay, I claim the passage, 
in its connection, as in confirmation of the prin- 
ciple. The "powers" to which the Apostle counsels 
subjection are, evidently, assumed to be such as 
keep themselves conformed to the laws, and true 
to the purposes, of their great Ordainer — such as 
"are not a terror to good works, but to the evil,'' — 
such as " are ministers of God for good ; to execute 

'2 



10 

wratli upon him that doeth evlV This is his own 
express description of the powers ordained of God. 
And beside, that Paul did ?iot mean, in this and 
kindred passages — so often cited now-a-days, as if 
they were the condensation of gospel morality — to 
teach the duty of unconditional obedience to civil 
government, is evident enough from his own practice. 
Civil government has its constituted limits; its 
God-appointed sphere. In its requisitions within 
those limits and that sphere, to its laws which vio- 
late no sense of obligation to a moral law, we are 
to be obedient. We may deem its enactments 
unwise and inexpedient, but may not, for that reason, 
disobey them. We have confided the judgment of 
these points to the government, and must abide by 
that judgment. We may feel its enactments to be 
oppressive and injurious, — they may abridge our 
comforts, they may waste our fortunes, they may 
restrain us in the exercise of natural rights and 
civil privileges; but we may not, for this reason, 
disobey and resist them. The authority of government 
is a rightful one, even in its abuse, while it keeps 
itself within its constituted limits. We are to bear 
with the personal evils which the State inflicts, or 
take ourselves from its jurisdiction, until, through 
legitimate and constitutional methods, we may obtain 
relief — •excepting always those instances of general 
and extreme oppression, constitutionally irremediable, 



11 

which justify revohition. We have no right, in 
view of our personal grievances, so far as they 
relate to physical and secular interests, to put in 
jeopardy, by a resistance to government, and by 
our exemple of disobedience to its authority, the 
good which, on the whole, it may be the medium 
of conferring. So much we may concede. But when 
government, by its enactments, demands of us the 
doing j of an unrighteous and inhuman act, known 
and felt as such by the enlightened judgment of 
mankind ; demands what seems to us a palpable 
violation of the law of God ; when it thus invades 
the region of the moral sentiments ; when it breaks 
into the sacred court of Conscience ; the case is 
widely different. It has, in so doing, transcended 
its constituted limits. It has gone out from its 
appointed sphere. It has assumed a right which 
was never given it — which it was never designed 
it should possess. It has dared the attempt to extend 
its sway where God has reserved to Himself the sole 
prerogative of reigning ; and disobedience is the sacred 
obligation. Government may sin against me, if it 
will, and answer for it to its great Ordainer; but 
it may not compel me to sin. It may inflict injury 
upon me, if so, in its perversity or its ignorance, it 
choose to do ; — I will endure it ; — but it may not 
compel me to inflict injury upon another, whom God 
is telling me to befriend. It may not compel me 



12 

to violate the immortal sentiments of justice and 
mercy which God's own spirit breathed within me 
when he gave me being. It has no right to do 
this ; and I have no right, as a moral and account- 
able being, to obey it, if it should. I have no right. 
It is not left to my choice. The line of duty is 
proclaimed to me by the voice of the Infinite Avithin 
my soul. The question of consequences, then., is an 
impertinence. As I have a soul to save and an 
account to give, I must, at all hazards, obey God. 

Here, then, is the principle by which to limit 
the general proposition, that obedience to civil gov- 
ernment is a sacred obligation. It is such so far 
as its requirements are not in conflict with the law 
of God. 

It is no new principle, now, for the first time, 
recognized and applied. It is not strained after for 
an emergency, ingeniously evoked from the mists 
of sophistry, or elaborately wrought of metaphysical 
subtleties. It is simple as Nature. It is clearly to 
be discerned as the lights of heaven. It is one of the 
fundamental truths of religion, and the strangeness 
is, that, at this late day, there should be a necessity 
for restating it. It is no new principle ; it has been 
asserted again and again. Calvin, in his Institutes 
of Religion, says — " In the obedience which we have 
shown to be due to the authority of governors, it is 
always necessary to make one exception, and that 



13 

is entitled to our first attention — that it do not 
seduce us from obedience to Him, to whose will 
the desires of all rulers ought to ' he subject, to 
whose decrees all their commands ought to yield, 
to whose majesty all their sceptres ought to submit. 
If they command any thing against Him, it ought 
not to have the least attention ; nor, in this case, 
ought we to pay any regard to all the dignity 
attached to magistrates." 

Milton says : " Whatever magistrate takes upon 
him to act contrary to what St. Paul makes the 
duty of those that are in authority — i. c. to what 
is morally lawful and good — that magistrate is not 
ordained of God, and, consequently, to such a magis- 
tracy no subjection is commanded, nor is any due, nor 
are the people forbidden to resist such authority." 

Professor Stuart (I quote his words simply to 
show that it is not a new princij^le), in com- 
menting on the very passage of the text, has these 
words — let him reconcile them with what he has 
since written — "The extension of the principles 
here enjoined, so as to make them imply implicit 
subjection to the magistrate in cases of a moral 
nature, where he enjoins what God has plainly for- 
bidden, would be a gross violation of the true prin- 
ciples of Christianity, which demands of us, in all 
such cases, to obey God rather than man ; the a])ostle 
himself was a most eminent example of exception to 



such a sweeping general principle of civil obedience. 
It is only when magistrates keep within the bounds 
oi moral prescription, that obedience is a duty." 

Blackstone, who will not be suspected of theo- 
logical bias, or weak sentimentalism, has said, in 
his Commentaries on English Law — " The law of 
nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by 
God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to 
any other. It is binding over all the globe, in 
all countries, and all times. No human laws are of 
any validity if contrary to this, and such of them 
as are valid, derive all their force and all their 
authority, mediately or immediately, from this orig- 
inal." He instances, also, offences, "which, if any 
human law should enjoin us to commit, we are 
bound to transgress that human law, else we offend 
both the natural and the divine." 

The principle has not only been recognized, but, in 
all ages, has been practically maintained. Men have 
gone to prison and to death in their acceptance of it. 
Some of the noblest deeds that history records were 
done in view of it. It was tested, of old, in the fiery 
furnace, and the lions' den. Rather than disobey God 
at the instance of human law, rather than sacrifice 
their convictions to their loyalty, men have endured 
every suffering and wrong, committing themselves and 
their cause to God. It is a principle which is calling 
for its martyrs now, and shall not be without them. 



15 



And yet how many, in our day and community, wise 
and good people too, accept it not, at least in a certain 
application of it. It is looked upon with suspicion 
and fear. It is denounced as impracticable and dan- 
gerous. The doctrine of a " higher law " than that of 
the Constitution, in civil matters, obtains but little 
currency among us. Nay, it has been ridiculed in 
our popular assemblies ; it has been reviled by our 
leading statesmen ; it has been preached against from 
our pulpits. In churches standing on pilgrim ground, 
it has been said that we are to have no conscience in 
these matters, or such only as comports with obedi- 
ence to the State, — no individual and private con- 
science, but only a sort of collective and public 
one, — that the laws of the land are, at all events, 
to be ol)eyed ; that the Union is every thing ; and 
that the sacred sentiments of justice and humanity are 
to be violated for the sake of its preservation. 

I confess, brethren, I stand aghast at such views — 
in perfect amazement that they find the adoption 
which they do. I respect, in many cases, the indi- 
viduals who promulgate them, but I can have no 
respect for the views. They are to me unchristian 
and atheistic. A few years ago, the religious portion 
of our community was ali^e with alarm at the pro- 
mulgation of what it deemed most harmful heresy, 
with regard to the external authority of the Bible. 
But here, it seems to me, is a heresy to be dreaded 



16 

with a tenfold greater dread, — a heresy which strikes, 
as I view it, not at the external authority, but at the 
very life of the Bible, — the supreme authority of its 
eternal principles. I call in question no one's motives. 
I pass no judgment upon men, but only upon views 
and doctrines ; and upon these I am bound to pass 
judgment, taking God's Word in my hand, and inter- 
preting it by whatever light He may vouchsafe to me ; 
and if I deem them false and evil, I have no option 
but to declare it. 

I know very well that it is easier to state a principle 
than to apply it ; and that, to many minds, there are 
objections to the application of this now set forth, 
which seem to them weighty and insuperable. It 
may be replied, that if the principle be a true one, it 
must, therefore, be a practicable one ; and that we 
have no right to suffer the apprehension of evil, as 
the possible result of its application, or the certainty 
of it, to lead us to question its rightness, or to flinch 
from its application. It is a principle which rests 
not on the calculations of expediency, but in the fact 
of God's moral attributes, and our relation to him as 
moral beings. We have not proved its rightness by 
showing it to be profitable, though we might assume 
its profitableness in showing it to be right. Right 
is always practicable, and it is always profitable, — 
certainly in the highest sense, and in the great result. 
But let us look at some of the more prominent 



ir 

objections which lie against the application of this 
principle, and the apprehended e\ils they assume, 
as we hear them continually set forth. 

The principle is, tliat we are bound to obey the 
requisitions of human law, except where they conflict 
with the law of God, as made known in our souls 
and in his Word ; that we are bound by an authority 
higher than its own, to do, in all cases and always, 
what is therein proclaimed to us as right. " But," it 
is said, " if you allow each individual to judge for 
himself what is right, and obey or disobey according 
to his judgment, you open the door, at once, to the 
worst of social evils and disorders ; one man may 
deem this law iniquitous, another that, until, in the 
diversities of moral judgments, there may be no law 
which shall command a universal obedience, and so- 
ciety be reduced to a state of confusion and anarchy." 
The answer is, — that this is supposing a result 
which we do not know will occur, — which is not 
likely to occur. The human conscience is not so 
uncertain a guide as it is thus assumed to be ; the 
law of E-ight is not so indistinctly apprehended. 
There may be weak consciences, there may be per- 
verted consciences, as we know there are ; but these, 
in every community, will be the exceptions. With 
the great majority of men, conscience, if not allowed 
to be blinded and turned aside by sordid and un- 
worthy aims, will pronounce on the great points of 



18 

moral obligation very much the same decision. " But, 
then, the liberty given would be abused ; men would 
plead conscientious convictions, as an excuse for 
disobedience to an offensive law, when there was 
no conscience about it, but only an imagined self- 
interest, or a stubborn self-will." Allow that, to some 
extent, it might be so, — is not every principle, and 
every prescribed rule of action, however sound and 
true, liable to be abused ? Is not evil incident to the 
practical workings of civil government, always and 
every where 1 And what do we, when we say that 
the individual is not to judge for himself, what is 
morally right and obligatory in the requirements of 
the State 1 Is it not to dishonor and disown the very 
principle which lies at the foundation of our Protes- 
tantism 1 Docs the right of private judgment have 
reference only to matters of belief, and not to those of 
conduct? Yea, and it is a right which we may not 
surrender. It involves a priceless privilege not only, 
but a solemn duty. God has bound it upon us in the 
trust of a moral nature. If, as moral beings, we are 
individually accountable ; if, at tlie great day, each 
must answer for himself as to his fidelity to the law 
of Kight ; by each for himself must be the decision 
as to what that law requires of him. In giving to 
each the capacity of moral judgment, God requires 
of each its exercise, in relation to civil as to all 
other matters ; and each, — let this be felt, — each is 



responsible for the manner of its exercise. Not rashly 
or lightly or irreverently, not in prejudice or pas- 
sion or excitement, not in a self-sufficient incon- 
siclerateness of others' a iews and arguments ; but 
deliberately, soberly, humbly, seeking all helps around 
us and above, in the love of truth and in the fear of 
God, are we severally to form our judgment as to 
Avhat is right and obligatory. And thus judging and 
thus acting, I cannot conceive that any great harm 
would come to society in the application of our 
principle. 

" But," again it is said, " your principle strikes at the 
authority of all government ; and government, as you 
allow, there must be. You counsel resistance, and 
resistance is rebellion." The reply is, that the resist- 
tance counselled is not the forcible resistance Avhich 
is rebellion, but that which consists in disobedience, 
with a passive submission to whatever penalty may 
be thereto attached. The authority is acknowledged 
which enacts the law, and enforces the penalty. We 
would resist that authority, not in its legitimate exer- 
cise ; not in its unlawful exercise, unless it go to the 
length of commanding us to do iniquity; and not 
then as an authority to punish for our disobedience to 
its command. The moral right to do it we deny, 
in relation to God ; but not the authoritij^ in relation 
to man. I will submit to government so far as to 
endure wrong, but never to do it. This is the course 



20 

which the early Christians adopted. They suffered 
wrongfully — they took the spoiling of their goods — 
they went to prison and to death, — and resisted not 
the enforcing power. It might sway itself over the 
body, but it could not bend the soul from its alle- 
giance to its God. 

" But," again it will be urged, " what if a law, 
which, in the application of your principle, you 
would feel justified in disobeying, be based upon, 
and in strict accordance with, a compact, entered into 
at the formation of the goAernment, and to which 
each individual, as a member of the State, has become 
a party, and is bound to recognize and support. 
Upon your own principle," it will be said, " the law 
should be obeyed. You would have us adhere to the 
Right, and surely it is right to do that which we 
have promised to do." Not, I answer, not if we have 
promised to do that which is wroiiq, — according to 
that acknowledged principle in human law, that " if 
the condition of a bond be, to do a thing which is 
intrinsically wrong, the obligation is void." Allow 
that, as an individual subject of the State and a 
partaker of its benefits, I am a sharer of what- 
ever obligations have been entered into in the past 
in its behalf, and which still constitutionally exist ; — 
allow, again, the question to be a settled one, that 
the law in view is legitimately and rightly based 
upon that compact, and in strict accordance with it. 



21 

as it was understood and intended by those who, 
originally, for civil ends, assented to it ; — allow this, 
there still comes up the simple question, but the 
fundamental and majestic one, Is it rights morally 
and intrinsically right ? 

" Personal security, x>crsonal liberty, and private 
property," says Blackstone, "are the three great pri- 
mary and inherent rights. No human legislature has 
power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner 
shall himself commit some act that amounts to a 
forfeiture." Let the compact in question be judged 
by these received principles of common law, — a 
compact whose end and aim is the better securing of 
millions of human beings, uncharged of crime, in a 
condition in which they are deprived of all these 
great, primary, and inherent rights, — and this, as the 
beginning only of its dire oppression. We are not 
to be driven from pressing the question for its true 
reply, because of the bearing of that reply upon those 
illustrious men who formed the Constitution. Honor 
and praise to them for all they did for freedom and 
human rights ! It is not for us to reconcile their 
agreement to such a compromise with their noble 
acts and sacrifices, their acknowledged wisdom and 
moral worth. We are to look, simply and only, as 
accountable and Christian men, to the moral aspect 
of this jirovision, as it appears to us, and as it stands 
connected with the law which we are now com- 



22 

manded to obey. For myself, I cannot acknowledge 
the binding obligation of any compact, made for me 
in the past, or of any law, enacted on whatever 
pretence or by whatever earthly power, by which I 
am compelled to do to a fellow-being, Avhom God 
is telling me to love and help, the very worst thing 
I can do to him, — send him to a fate, worse — as 
he feels it, and as it is — than death. 

" But," it is still further urged, " what if, by the 
application of your principle, you bring about the 
dissolution of the national Union, you sunder m 
twain this fair brotherhood of States, and thus draw 
down upon us the worst of social woes, and preju- 
dice and put back the cause of freedom, and all the 
best interests of humanity, throughout the world." 
The picture is, indeed, an appalling one, on which 
Ave have been called so often, of late, to look, of 
the probable and almost certain consequences of a 
dissolution of the Union. Who does not love that 
Union, for the glorious achievements in which it 
had its origin ; for the priceless privileges of which 
it is the medium ; for the thrilling hopes it has every- 
where enkindled? But if it can be preserved only 
by a deliberate compromise with oppression and 
wrong, by a smothering and denial of the sacred 
sentiments of humanity, then, the time has come, 
in tlie purposes of God, so declared in this very 
fact, for its dissolution. Where has God told us. 



23 

that for the securing of any good whatever, we might 
violate any one of liis commandments'? Let Him 
break the awful silence of His heavens and audibly 
proclaim it, or marshal their silvery flames into a 
legible decree, that, so far as may be deemed neces- 
sary for the maintenance of the American Union, 
there is an abrogation of His law; that, for this 
end, His voice within may be slighted, and His 
blessed Christ forsaken ; that, for this end, the soul 
may scoff at the immortal majesty of Justice, and 
the celestial sweetness of Compassion ; — let Him do 
this, and then, and not sooner, may we entertain the 
thought of being authorized in such a course. 

And let us not imagine that the evils consequent 
upon our action, as a people, in relation to this law, 
are all on the side of disobedience to it. Let views 
like those which have come forth from the high 
places of the land, and been echoed back from many 
a pulpit of the Church, be practically adopted, be- 
come a part of the public morality ; let the pleading 
sentiments of humanity be put down, and the Law 
of God dethroned from its supremacy, in obedience 
to this most inhuman and unrighteous law — • and is 
there no evil worthy to be deprecated in that demor- 
alization, public and private, which cannot but ensue'? 
Looking at it merely in its civil bearings, is there 
nothing to fear from if? What constitutes the sta- 
bility of a State, and gives security beneath its laws, 



24 

but a reverence for moral principles, — for the great 
Fountain of Law, — in the hearts of the people] Who 
are the real disorganizers 1 they who teach the abso- 
lute morality, or they who advocate the morality 
of expediency? they who announce and heed a 
Higher Law, or they who scout the idea of it? 
What is it that really endangers the permanency 
of our Republic 1 What but that monster W^rong, — 
fostered beneath its shade, coeval with its birth and 
strengthening with its strength, which is denying 
to three millions of human beings the sacred rights 
of humanity? What but that terrible Iniquity, 
whose retribution is already upon us, in a blunted 
national conscience, a lessening love of freedom, a 
depressed humanity, a fettered gospel ; and which, 
if much longer upheld and fostered, must bring down 
upon us, as God is just, his more fearful judgments? 
And yet, we are told that our safety lies in con- 
ciliating and strengthening it, by committing our- 
selves more fully to its support, and sharing more 
directly in its deeds. Do we realize what a blighting 
censure is passed upon our nation and ourselves, when 
it is thus assumed that our civil safety is dependent 
upon our holding, with tightened grasp, the chains 
of the enslaved, and in aiding with our own hands 
to rebind them upon those who, in the might of an 
intrepid manhood, have sundered them and fled ? 
Humiliating, indeed, is the fact, if fact it be, that 



25 

only by lending ourselves to this basest work to 
which a human being can be put, is our " glorious " 
Union to be preserved. Humiliating and most 
strange the fact, that the permanency of a free 
Republic should be secured only by suppressing 
the love of Freedom, and the dictates of Humanity, 
and the sentiment of Justice, in the breasts of its 
subjects. And are we men, and yet willing to admit 
that any good, supposed to be dependent upon the 
permanency of our Kepublic, is an equivalent for 
the price thus demanded for it ? Ah ! what will 
all our prosperity be worth, if, underneath its daz- 
zling glare, the w^ork of moral deterioration and 
decline, — by that very prosperity fed and fostered, — 
shall be going forward ? What is the Union worth, 
if, instead of being the home of holy Freedom, and 
the nursery of noble souls, it is to exist but by 
being false to Freedom and the soul '? What is it 
worth, if the mere honest advocacy of human rights 
and a higher law, — if the mere breathings within it 
of God's own Truth, — if the mere echoes, beneath 
its majestic dome, of the tramp of sacred Justice, be 
sufficient, as we are told they are, to topple down 
the pillars of its strength 1 

At any rate, I see but one course for us, as 

Christian men, in relation to this subject, which I have 

thus again brought before you. The path of duty 

and of safety — thoy are ever identical — is in an 

1 



26 

uncompromising fidelity to whatever God shall show 
us, through the sentiments of our hearts and the 
teachings of Christianity, to be right. Let no human 
authority ever restrain us from this path. Let no 
leanings of sordid desire tempt us from it. Let no 
view of consequences allure or affright us from it. 
And let nothing — no fear of men, no alienation of 
friends, no edict from whatever source — prevent us 
from advocating the cause of the oppressed, — from 
obeying the dictates of humanity in their behalf, 
whenever Providence shall grant us the opportunity. 



